WASHINGTON, DC – Award recipients, ranging from actor Jon Voight to Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle, praised Andrew Breitbart during the Patriot Awards on Saturday, underscoring the immeasurable scope of his legacy.
After winning one of just a handful of Patriot Awards, which recognize individual contributions to the MAGA movement, Voight gave a nod to Breitbart in his remarks. He recalled meeting Breitbart at a small gathering of conservatives in Hollywood years ago.
WATCH — Actor Jon Voight Remembers Andrew Breitbart at Patriot Awards: “I Loved Him”:
“I saw Andrew Breitbart, and I’m sitting there next to Gary Sinise and I’m saying, ‘Gary, this guy’s got it. He’s amazing,’” Voight recalled.
Voight reminisced about his conversation with Breitbart after the event.
“I said, ‘Andrew, you’re a special guy.’ I said, you know, ‘What are you going to do with that energy?’ And I was saying to him that, you know, ‘I say a few things, I’m not as open as some people, but I say a few things — I’m not afraid to get in the game a little bit,’” Voight recalled. “And he said to me, ‘Jon, I can’t wait. I can’t wait to get into their faces.’”
“I said, ‘Oh, this guy’s dangerous,’” he added, drawing laughs. “And then I saw what he did with that energy. He did confront everything. He said these most wonderful things.”
As one Voight pointed to Breitbart’s famous standoff with Occupy protesters, telling them to “behave” themselves and to “stop raping people!”
“He got up in front of them, and they would shout him down and try to shout him down, and the press was there, right? So he knew what to do with the press,” Voight said. “He stood up and stood in front of these people, he went right to them, and he said, ‘Stop raping! Stop raping!’ He said it like 15 times, and that was it. That was the way the message got across to people that these people were perverse people, you see, bad people, criminals.”
“And anyway, he had this great imagination, and I loved him, and I spoke to him the day before he passed,” Voight added. “And he was he was attacked, you know, just like in the way our president was attacked, Rudy Giuliani was attacked, and all that, but he stood up. He was so beautiful, such a beautiful person.”
Boyle also paid homage to Breitbart after being presented with his award.
“Andrew Breitbart always used to talk about how culture is upstream from politics and you have to win the culture war. Well, let me make it clear: the Presidential Inaugural Committee just announced that Nelly is performing at one of the inaugural balls on Monday night. Last night, we had Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross, and Soulja Boy performing — not my cup of tea, but whatever. The point is — Rascal Flatts are performing at another one, Carrie Underwood is singing at the inauguration — we’ve won the culture war, guys,” Boyle said, to applause.
“I will say, Andrew Breitbart would be so proud of where we are as a movement today; he was a really good friend of mine, and we have a very, very bright future ahead of us,” he said to close out his remarks. “So here in the heart of the establishment media’s power, if you will, in Washington, DC, at the National Press Club, we declare: The establishment media, you are dead, and we’re going to win this thing.”
James O’Keefe, founder of O’Keefe Media Group, also honored Breitbart when he accepted his Patriot Award.
“So I’ll keep this pretty short, but you know I appreciate this honor and Andrew Breitbart, there’s so much to say, but way back when, because I’ve been doing this since I was in college, he used to say ‘We are the media now’ right? ‘We are the media,’” O’Keefe said after noting OMG broke a story last week leading to the firing of a Pentagon official.
“This week, you know, in an extraordinary series of events, the Pentagon fired this guy for, you know, he’s an adviser to the Joint Chiefs; he’s in meetings inside the Situation Room inside the Pentagon, and in an extraordinary series of events, not one single member of the DC press corps reported on it,” O’Keefe added. “So I think Andrew used to say this in so many words, but it’s not that the legacy media is just merely not reporting news–now they’re in the news suppression business. And stop complaining about the media. Understand that now you, me, we are the media.”
The tributes come as the 13th anniversary of Breitbart’s passing, March 1, 2025, approaches.
The Patriot Awards, which are 18-inch bronze statues of Trump, resemble a larger-than-life two-story bronze statue of Trump, which Breitbart News first reported of in November as it neared completion.
“PATRIOT Founder Ashley Sansalone was responsible for the idea to create the statue and manages the construction and logistics of the project,” event host Dustin Stockton told Breitbart News. “Without Ash, none of this could have happened.”
Stockton is a former Breitbart News reporter.
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